Here via metafandom. I find what you’re saying fascinating. I never thought of Scully as being someone who adopted Mulder’s obsession because it was Mulder’s, but because it came to fascinate her as much as it fascinated him, and I also always thought of them as equals. Agree completely on the romance between them seeming inevitable, because the show went out of its way to show that this was the only other person around who knew what they knew, went through what they went through, and they were occupying all available space in each other’s lives and left none for a romance with anyone else. (I have a rant about writers writing male friendship characters as occupying all available space in each other’s lives and then just throwing a token female in from time to time to assert their heterosexuality but that’s for another time.)
Sam Carter (the woman on Stargate) definitely had her own agenda for going through the Stargate, as did all of the team: Jack to gather military weaponry, Daniel initially to look for his wife and learn about new cultures, later just to learn about new cultures, and Sam was the one interested in the gate technology itself, and in gathering scientific technology (as opposed to military technology), while Teal’c wanted to free his people from the oppression of false gods. Sam also had her own storyline of the possession by a second consciousness through having the memories of Jolinar (although, alas, they never did as much with it on the show as I would have liked).
The ‘man with breasts’ thing is irking me on all kinds of levels because it seems to argue that a woman is something that can be narrowly defined, and that men also can be narrowly defined, and never the twain shall meet. I think there is already a problem with women on TV being presented in a very limited palette of colours. The myth of women as patient, enduring, and faithful seems to be perpetuated across the board as if it were a truth, to the point where any deviation is condemned as unrealistic, and yet the biggest male-female problem of most of the women I know over forty is not their husbands or partners leaving them for a younger woman, but persistently still hanging around years after their wife's or partner's interest in them has waned and she has suggested it might be better if they went their separate ways. (The ‘He just won’t *leave*!’ problem.) If a woman on TV were to be written with exactly that attitude, despite feeling totally realistic to me, would her behaviour be deemed as somehow ‘male’ and inauthentic as a consequence just because such an attitude is untypical among TV women although entirely typical among real ones? (Samantha Spade on 'Without A Trace' is one of the few female characters on TV who actually rings true to me.)
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zvi and
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Date: 2007-09-03 03:37 pm (UTC)Sam Carter (the woman on Stargate) definitely had her own agenda for going through the Stargate, as did all of the team: Jack to gather military weaponry, Daniel initially to look for his wife and learn about new cultures, later just to learn about new cultures, and Sam was the one interested in the gate technology itself, and in gathering scientific technology (as opposed to military technology), while Teal’c wanted to free his people from the oppression of false gods. Sam also had her own storyline of the possession by a second consciousness through having the memories of Jolinar (although, alas, they never did as much with it on the show as I would have liked).
The ‘man with breasts’ thing is irking me on all kinds of levels because it seems to argue that a woman is something that can be narrowly defined, and that men also can be narrowly defined, and never the twain shall meet. I think there is already a problem with women on TV being presented in a very limited palette of colours. The myth of women as patient, enduring, and faithful seems to be perpetuated across the board as if it were a truth, to the point where any deviation is condemned as unrealistic, and yet the biggest male-female problem of most of the women I know over forty is not their husbands or partners leaving them for a younger woman, but persistently still hanging around years after their wife's or partner's interest in them has waned and she has suggested it might be better if they went their separate ways. (The ‘He just won’t *leave*!’ problem.) If a woman on TV were to be written with exactly that attitude, despite feeling totally realistic to me, would her behaviour be deemed as somehow ‘male’ and inauthentic as a consequence just because such an attitude is untypical among TV women although entirely typical among real ones? (Samantha Spade on 'Without A Trace' is one of the few female characters on TV who actually rings true to me.)